Getting Right After Getting It Wrong

So for money, I do work for giant corporations and startups. For fun I think about mom-and-pop businesses (and somewhat bigger), thinking about how the changes in technology and behavior effect them.

I do presentations for free to Rotary and CofC groups, and talk about a variety of things. One topic that always comes up is complaints – what to do about them.

Life was kind enough to hand me an example of how to do it right.

I recently bought a new Toyota pickup truck (you need something to haul the motorcycles to the mechanic). I tried to buy it at DCH, the dealer a mile from out house, and didn’t have a great experience. I shrugged it off, and bought the truck online (although I had to use the Internet to help the broker find the exact configuration I wanted…).

When it came time to take it my local dealer, I thought “Well, let’s let them service it – how hard can it be?” Read the rest at the Yelp post I wrote.

Here’s what happened. First, I assume they looked on Yelp and found my one-star review, which triggered their response.

When they responded, they owned the problem. They apologized for what they hadn’t done – test driven the car instead of just relying on the mechanic, allowing him to just drive it up and down the (smooth, slow) street in back of the dealership, etc. No excuses, no passing the buck, a clean “we screwed this up and now we’ll make it right.”

I did a ghetto fix on the weatherstrip, using adhesive, and they insisted I bring it back and have it done right.

They did (and it is – slightly – better than my home-brew fix), and I appreciate it, and now look at them in a completely different light.

Clearly they should have done it right the first time. But none of is always do. And one thing that social media offers us is the feedback to get our mistakes pointed out to us so that we can fix them. DCH Toyota did, and you and I can too.